She bowed her head and waited, hoping his appearance was a formal signal only and that he had no business with her. The demesne’s folk were growing used to their new Chalice, and they were now coming to her more and more; this was a relief in some ways, and she knew she must be grateful for the good this was doing Willowlands, but she often had to put aside what other work she had planned on doing. She had fled to the House library today and was hastily reading up on the behaviour toward and reception of outblood Heirs. Part of her problem, she thought, as she had thought many times since the Chalice had come to her, was that she was not by nature a formal sort of person; she found that side of the duties of the Chalice so difficult as sometimes to feel incompatible with her private self. She wondered if this was anything like trying to live in the human world when you were a priest of Fire.
She had waited what seemed rather a long time with her head bowed, hoping that he would go away, waited until she began to worry that there was some ritual gesture that was now hers to make that he was waiting for. She raised her head at last, reluctantly, and found him staring at her with an intensity she disliked a great deal.
“I hoped,” he said with a diffidence she was sure was feigned, “that you might have a little time for me.”
Involuntarily she glanced at the book still open on the table. The driest record of a thousand-year-old court award ceremony would have been preferable to spending time with Horuld, and what she was reading did not merely interest her but drew her almost feverishly. She had not seen the Master for private speech since his first meeting with Horuld, although she often felt his presence in the earthlines, and she wondered what he thought of his Heir, and what he was, or wasn’t, doing to make his Heir acceptable to the demesne. She realised in the shock of Horuld’s unexpected and unwanted presence that part of her feverishness to learn about outblood Heirs was that she suspected the Master of trying to persuade the demesne to find Horuld satisfactory, even desirable. This was only what a responsible Master would do, but….
“Of course,” she said, after too long a pause. “Chalice and Heir must”—she stumbled over her attempt to find words she could bring herself to say—“be acquainted.”
And she went with him. But when he offered her his arm she pretended not to see, and instead folded her own arms in the ritual shape of a Chalice without a chalice. elbows tucked closely in, wrists crossed and hands loosely clasped. It had only ever been something to do with her hands on those fortunately few occasions when the Chalice was expected to attend but with no cup to present; today it felt like warding.
He had nothing to say to her; nothing of substance. She kept waiting for him to reveal his purpose—the purpose that was keeping her away from her reading—and answered as briefly as possible, almost falling into monosyllables and then remembering with an effort that she had to be polite to him; trying to prevent her mind wandering from his pointless remarks about the weather, about the picture or ornament in this or that hallway of the House, about that bird which had sat singing outside the House when he arrived. At each new topic she would jerk her attention back to focus, expecting to hear what he wished to speak about at last. The weather? Was there an omen in it? There were those who could read the future in the shape of the clouds, or said they could—although the Weatheraugur, whom Mirasol thought wistfully she rather liked, said this was nonsense. The painting of the yellow fruit outside one of the lesser meeting rooms—she’d always thought it rather dull herself—had it perhaps belonged to the forebear Horuld could trace his Heirship to, and he was suggesting that it should be more prominently displayed? The bird—he couldn’t be talking about a redsong, could he? Redsongs were commoner than mud in a wet season. If he was trying to imply that a redsong singing for his arrival meant the demesne welcomed him, he was a fool.
He went on and on. As Chalice—and she did not plan ever to be Mirasol for this man—she could not be asked to sit and chat, so they had to stand or keep moving. They paced slowly through the House and then he took her for a stroll around the gardens, remarking on a shrub or a flower as if imparting some new perception, while she felt half mad from boredom, and from his extreme ignorance of plants. It occurred to her to wonder if anyone so ignorant could be Master; no garden would flourish under the weight of such ineptitude, which would put a greater burden on the gardeners and the rest of the Circle. And yet Horuld’s animation seemed to increase the longer he held her prisoner. He caught her eye every opportunity he had—and she felt she had to meet his eyes occasionally—and smiled as if he believed she was happy in his company.
Once or twice she caught him looking at her in a way…she had to be imagining it; no Chalice and Master, nor Master’s Heir, could…but the look made her long for the heavy camouflaging Chalice’s robes, when ordinarily she was extremely grateful to be free of them for a day.
She finally managed to stop at one of the gates to the garden and resist being swept any farther. She did not know how she could take leave of him; she’d been clutching the formality of the Chalice to her with her clasped hands against her breast and therefore had to maintain the Chalice’s character. She was sure a Chalice could not dismiss an Heir, but she didn’t know how to get rid of him, and he gave the impression that he would cling to her forever if she did not. So she stopped and stood and bowed her head and refused to meet his eyes for several minutes—her heart beating in her throat in fear of the terrible insult she might be offering—and at last he thanked her for the noble condescension of her company—ugh, she thought, keeping her face blank—and bowed several times as he backed away from her. Backed away from her, she thought, troubled, when he finally seemed to have gone away and left her alone, and she risked raising her head again. Backed away. What had she given him that he was so pleased with?
She half ran back to the library, but her concentration was gone. She read a little more, about mixtures to be thought of when dealing with outblood Heirs, when the Master was present and when he was not, how both to delimit and to integrate such an Heir’s place in the demesne. And then she shut the book and picked up another, smaller book that she could take with her back to her cottage. Perhaps reading within the sound of her bees would help bring her mind back to her business again; she would be positively glad of some ordinary unexpected visitor hoping for help or honey…. She didn’t understand why she felt such a sense of doom. All that had happened was that she had lost two hours to a nonentity…except that he wasn’t a nonentity. He was little enough in himself, but he was the Overlord’s pawn and a danger to her demesne, and to her Master.
The walk back to her cottage settled her nerves a little; enough, at least, that she could open her new book and begin to read it without missing every other word. The amount of reading she did now was yet another of the strains of being Chalice. Her mother had taught her to read, and she had a few record books of this little corner of the demesne’s woods (she kept telling herself she should pass these on to the new keepers, but she never quite got round to it), her father’s account books, and one of the lives and meanings and symbolism of the trees of the demesne. She had used this when she had planted trees for her bees—birch, beech and hawthorn, but also a parasol tree. There hadn’t been a parasol tree outside the House gardens in generations, but the one at the edge of her meadow was already twice as tall as she was, and her bees adored its flowers.